Taylor swift manager is selling her “masters” ,what is a masters?
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They used to call it the “master tape” (back when they used tapes) but it’s the actual finished recording that CDs/records/downloads/streams are copies of. (When they “remaster” something it means they made a new master from the raw files/tapes/tracks so that it sounds better).
As you might guess, the master of a popular record is quite valuable, because whoever owns it has the right to sell records of it or license it to commercials/movies. Taylor Swift doesn’t own her old masters, so there’s a significant amount of royalty money she’s missing out on when her old records are sold or streamed. So, she’s making new recordings and asking people to buy those instead.
This has happened before. Off the top of my head, two Canadian punk bands (Chixdiggit and Subhumans) both recorded new versions of their first albums because they either couldn’t afford to buy/license the masters from whoever owned them to make reissues with or the owner refused for some reason.
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